In May 2009, New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman introduced S. 1060, the Obesity Prevention, Treatment, and Research Act of 2009, stating: “Food and beverage advertisers are estimated to spend [up to $12B] per year to target children and youth.” It died in committee.

In June 2009, Representative Joe Sestak authored H.R. 2690, the School Meal Enhancement Act of 2009. It died in committee.

The same month, Colorado Senator Bill Bennett offered S. 1293, the Enhancing Child Health with Automatic School Meal Enrollment Act of 2009. It died in committee.

In September 2009, CSPI supported legislation by New York Representative Carolyn McCarthy addressing their concerns over junk food in schools. McCarthy’s H.R. 5431, the Start Healthy Habits Early Act,died in subcommittee.

It wasn’t until December 2010, curiously after voters fired the Democrats in the November elections, that S. 3307, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, became law. This allegedly will address vending machine in schools. However, while there appears to be broad support for addressing childhood obesity, most Americans oppose food bans and don’t think it’s the government’s business to regulate what we eat. Considering the history of failure and the utter lack of accountability consistently affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, such skepticism is justified.

Meanwhile, rather than wait for government to do something, many school districts made improvements. For example, a University of Minnesota study found that 330 public school districts had been offering healthy food for the last five years and “did not see a falloff in demand.” This highlights the benefits of local control, where schools respond to their tax-paying constituents.

All this political drama over school nutrition serves to distract constituents from the fact that public schools fail to educate. But it does create an opportunity to grow the DOE: More laws to implement and enforce means more personnel, more office space, computers, etc. The projected 2011 DOE budget is about $3B higher, perhaps reflecting this fact. Considering this process of transferring your wealth and power to the government, it’s reasonable to expect an eventual expansion of this program to include punishing parents who don’t get with the new program. After all, it’s for the children.

From 1990-2006, Agribusiness spent 31% of their total campaign contributions on Democrats ($120M out of $392M). For the 2008 and 2010 cycles, this increased to 39% ($22M of $57M). Also, since passage of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform in 2002, Democrats have garnered an increasing share of business contributions, 55.9% in 2008 and 55.6% in 2010.

This is all further evidence that the government has no obligation to serve you — though they seem to do well by their corporate donors — because there are no consequences for failing the people. Perhaps it’s time to inject free market dynamics via school choice? Capitalism’s built-in feedback system of mutual self-interest between buyers and sellers offers a chance to enforce consequences via profit and loss.

* All bills available by number at the Library of Congress’s THOMAS website.

Former civilian disarmament supporter and medical researcher Howard Nemerov investigates the civil liberty of self-defense and examines the issue of gun control, resulting in his book Four Hundred Years of Gun Control: Why Isn’t It Working? He appears frequently on NRA News as their “unofficial” analyst and was published in the Texas Review of Law and Politics with David Kopel and Carlisle Moody.

Click here to view the 56 legacy comments

Click here to hide legacy comments

56 Comments, 30 Threads

1.
Bulgaricus

The best thing to do w/ the Dept. of Ed. is to abolish it. Ditto the California State Dept. of “Education.”

Our bodies are flooded with unnatural substances from meat/eggs/milk treated with hormones and antibiotics, we have GMO and pesticide riddled veggies and fruits, we have plastics and other man-made materials leaching into our foods and we have water treatment facilities that dose us with fluoride (a byproduct of making aluminum) and other toxins…

An absolutely perfect post for those that think we should ‘save the planet’ for the spotted owl, whales and polar bears and simply dismiss humans as of any importance. In this light, I would suggest that we all just simply ‘graze’ and go back to hunting and gathering except that the federal government has taken over so much land in this country that we are not allowed to “hunt or graze on it”.

Environmental activists are as big a threat to our future as the Islamic terrorists who want us all to be sharia compliant. Sharia compliant/control of our environment … same difference.

Agree! As a right-winger, I’m pretty tired of running into right-wingers who think I’m an enviro-nut for giving a damn about poisons in food. Wanting to keep neuro-toxins out of my food supply does not make me a left-wing worshipper of Gaia. And clearing the food supply of toxins is NOT akin to a nanny state. Keeping poisonous substances out of our food chain is more akin to keeping pro-communism out of elementary school textbooks.

Same here. I am very concerned about being forced to ingest and even breathe toxins in the water (when I shower). I try to buy organic when I can find a good deal. There is something very suspect about obesity being so high when many of our ancestors ate very high fat diets (admittedly not as much processed carb diets).

I would love to hunt and plant my own food (personally, I think it’s very sad how many animals are caged and treated with drugs and hormones until they are dispatched but I’m certainly no tree hugger). I’m planning on planting some miniature fruit trees next spring (or fall).

Our ancestors had to hunt, farm or haul stuff to earn a living. Even in times of plenty they burned enough calories that they only gained a modest amount of weight (a good reserve to have on hand in case of famine). The issue today is not so much overeating as it is too little activity.

I’m not sure how the gov’t can micromanage families that are crazy, ignorant or uncaring. Do you want to give the gov’t even more power to interfere in the lives of people who are not ignorant, crazy or uncaring? This idea that all problems can be solved is what has gotten this society in trouble in the first place.

There are always some who will upend society to protect every last person or child and while I applaud the idea in theory, in reality it goes in the face of reality to expect it can succeed. All it will do is cause chaos. Look at the TSA who are trying to leave no stone unturned; because of a few score maniacs, millions are discomfited. I do not want to live in a zero tolerance country.

The obvious defect in the author’s proposal is the assumption that the citizenry should be treated as responsible, rational persons when it should be obvious that responsibility and rationality are attributes only of politicians, bureaucrats and experts.

His kind of thinking could lead to liberty. And then where would we all be?

The comments on this thread could be bolstered by research into the plans of social psychologists who served “socially responsible capitalists” of the Committee For Economic Development (started in 1942). I wrote about some of their expertise here: http://clarespark.com/2011/01/02/the-watchbird-state/. I don’t like the term “nanny state” because these very powerful “liberal” men were not infested with Mothers or any other women, but they were just as controlling as the worst anti-female stereotypes.

Great article! The Supreme Court is reminding us the nanny state cannot protect us. Ask police officers and they’ll say the same thing, that until a crime is committed, there is no crime. This should be a wake-up call to everyone who thinks the govt should be in charge.

This says parents, not teachers or the bloated bureaucratic education system, are responsible for their children. The common-sense solution is privatizing education, along with other public services. Old timers who remember when the ‘phone company’ had no competition also remember weeks-long waits for service, high costs and no innovation.

Regarding obesity, where are the follow-up studies to adding growth hormones to our meat and milk-products? It may not be cause-and-effect, but since obesity followed the food contamination in lock-step, doesn’t it bear investigation? Anyone who has tried to seek information on this issue sees an FDA and the Ag Dept ‘owned’ by the drug companies. Only foreign press reported this, as they were concerned about the effects upon children and pregnant women. Our feed-lot-produced beef and milk products are banned in Europe. Is a 6-week-long study of rats really sufficient testing? When animal rights efforts stopped the practise of testing on animals other than rats, we became the guinea pigs, without any follow-up study on results. This is our government at work?

Competition keeps businesses honest. The US government doesn’t want competition which is why the ultimate goal is to have an American educational system controlled by the Dept. of Education. That will insure that the government bureaucracy will dictate the lesson plans.

I was born within shouting distance of the leading edge of the Baby Boom and served my K through 12 sentence in the 50′s/early 60′s. Apart from spending 5 years (grades 4 through 8) at a boarding academy in Southern Ontario (where food choices were another story altogether), I was educated in public schools. Also apart from spending kindergarten and part of first grade in a school district in a working class manufacturing town, the schools where I took grades 1 through 3 and grades 9 through 12 were in an upscale suburban community where taxes were high and the school system relatively wealthy. Our school system was among the top five academically performing school systems in the state consistently, and was always among the top-wage group for teachers in the state.

The closest thing we had to junk food being sold in our high school cafeteria was a milkshake machine operated by the athletic boosters club and ice cream sandwiches sold on the food lines as a desert sometimes. Students were forbidden from leaving campus for lunch and no individual food deliveries were allowed to the schools. The school system and school board took an active role in limiting the amount of junk food we encountered in our academic lives. Even the food choices sold at sporting events were limited to hot dogs, chips and sodas.

Of course there were bake sales from time to time, but they were infrequent, just as the very occasional candy bar-fund raising sales were. Teachers who wished to hold any fund-raiser had to petition the school board directly for permission to have students sell anything. There were no candy/snack/soda machines allowed on campus at all. It’s probably no real surprise that obesity wasn’t nearly the problem that it is today. You also won’t be surprised to learn that wearing blue jeans to school was forbidden in my 9-12 school and being caught wearing them was cause to get you sent home to change into acceptable garb.

As I’ve written this out, I’ve been reminded of the fact that regulation of food choices and other social behaviour in schools was once quite common and didn’t ruffle many feathers at all. And I think I understand why – one of the key differences between regulation back then, and regulation now, is that it was locally motivated and imposed. It wasn’t federal or even state legislation which caused our school district to keep Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Frito-Lay out of our schools, it was the parents of the school district exerting electoral and other pressure on the school board and school administration which did so. Additionally, our school system wasn’t scrambling for dollars, so that the substantial bribes dangled in front of them by the food vendors were more easily dismissed.

The unhealthy food issue in public schools is one of those issues which reminds me that we’ve really lost our way from the local or even state control over such social issues which our forefathers intended for us to exert. Part of the freedoms they envisioned for this nation were the freedoms which allow people to make good and bad choices as long as those same people were willing to bear the consequences of their choices.

See the funny thing about that stance is that when I went to High School there was a big issue about kids going across the street to Burger King during lunch. The catch? Burger King’s menu was healthier than the cafeteria’s. The prohibition on going off site had zero to do with health and everything to do with food contracts and liability.

Kids are fat because they are not allowed to be children on the playground because someone might scape there knee (God forbid ) and some kid might not be athletic and have there feelings hurt.

The educators who do the master plan need to go back to little house on the prarie times when kids actually learned. My nephew is in the second grade and during Thanksgiving we talked about what he was studying and my head nearly exploded. They are not learning nouns and verbs. They are learning the naming thing and the doing thing. This generation will not be worth spit considering in NJ we are spending on average more than $9000. A year per student

What this article misses as do most if not all the posts is that the whole Department of Education is unconstitutional and should be abolished immediately. At least it can be de-funded so those employed by it can go to other departments or to unemployment lines and from there to new productive jobs.

Ironic, isn’t it? What you glean from this article is that the government believes they have no obligation to actually do their jobs for which we pay them. Yet when they DO want to do their jobs, it’s all about imposing yet another damned fool idea onto our backs.

Seems to me that our relationship with our government is precisely reversed from what it should be. They are not our masters, and we are not their subjects. Though that’s precisely where we’re at.

“A State’s failure to protect an individual against private violence generally does not constitute a violation of the Due Process Clause, because the Clause imposes no duty on the State to provide members of the general public with adequate protective services.”

The abbreviated quotation above doesn’t convey the same meaning. Whether or not you like the Supreme Court’s ruling is up to you: it’s your Constitution, not mine. I just wanted to clarify the issue.

Having said that, I do sympathize with the author of this article, because the degradation of educational standards is deplorable, wherever it happens, and it is certainly occurring in Britain today, too, and in many Western countries.

Welcome to the discussion. Keep in mind that there are word limits beyond which readers tune out. Bringing in our 14th Amendment’s Due Process clause would be one additional topic too many for this article, but is a vital element in regaining our liberties from an over-grasping government. For example, it certainly was germane in Heller and McDonald, moving us forward in restoring our civil right of self-defense.

Arne Duncan and Michelle Obama need to get out of the way. They make silly pronouncements and waste my time reading them.From experience as a former teacher I found jawboning on the federal level any solutions to educational problems, is rather ignorant.
There is no nexus between them and a school’s achievements.
Obama is a walking advertisement to do whatever you want in Law School. Did he even attend a Constitutional Law class? I doubt it. Two more years of these awful examples will be hard to take (Mao is not a good model for students to follow).
###

students do get a quality education, I’m a teacher and I invite anybody who writes here to visit their children’s schools and see for themselves, spend a day at the school and have a solid opinion, in my view the problem is to a great extend the PARENTS, they keep buying their children everything and do not use any accountability of any kind, hours of tv, very little or no reading, zero study, etc, how 40-45 minutes of a class covers everything? study at home, reading and practice is a must, I did not get two masters by watching tv or hanging out with my friends, but with endless hours of study and reading and practice, when are we going to hold the parents accountable? and the students? in this triangle, teachers are only one side.

You have utterly eroded any potential at all whatsoever of any semblance of credibility with your poor grammar skills. A teacher, indeed. You illustrate quite nicely the concept that a large problem with the US public education system lies with its teachers.

While the school system, especially the union-dominated public schools continued to churn out functionally illiterate graduates, in the staggering order of 36% of total output in some localities , the entertainment industry conspired to commercially nurture a mindless citizenry, happily unaware of its cultural illiteracy. What with instant gratification as the most dominant operational impetus in this age of light speed modern technology, moral illiteracy if not moral imbecility is bound to follow as surely as day follows night.

It is precisely in this context that the election of President Obama fits ever so snugly into the progressivist template for a takeover of the country. The recent passage of ObamaCare into law with its concomitant federal takeover of the student loan program sort of sealed the deal for the federalization of education.
Most of our young, will never see the dagger coming to murder their futures.

I think it is political correctness is a leading cause of school failure. Whoever decided that everyone is equal when it comes to learning was wrong. There is such a thing as the bell curve and it, pretty much, sizes up American students. Not everyone should even think of attending college. Germany has had an apprentice system for years. Some kids will be excellent plumbers, electricians, or mechanics and the stigma attached to ‘working class jobs’ should be eliminated.If children were screened at an early age to go to diversified schools, education might be more successful. That decision should not be made on the basis of one test or one person’s evaluation and the student should not be locked into that category forever. Quotas for anything should be tossed out. Some children are late bloomers or are in a terrible home situation and special provisions must be made for them. I am a retired teacher who has taught all grades through grade 10. I taught gifted children (IQs above 140) for about 10 years. Even kids with high IQs are not good at everything. I would close the Department of Education and all the teachers’ colleges. Let the professors there find a real job in the trenches of a public school. I think prospective teachers should be mentored by teachers who are especially good at what they teach. And I don’t think some reading program adopted from a school system in New Zealand is necessarily appropriate for a school system in the US…..even if those espousing it had taxpayer-funded trips to that country.

ok people, I am as conservative as any of you are, I suffered more than 30 years of communism, not many of you can say that, and please, when I write these comments I do it like a text message in my phone, just trying to say my views, I did not know that we have to ‘police’ the writings of others, I check the content, not the style, it is surprising that you are attacking me, please comment on the issues, on the substance, I normally see a lot of grammar and spelling errors in these comments, but I figure people do it fast like in their phones, no need to call me names, I’m a proud naturalized AMERICAN, did not come to make a buck, came because I share the ideals of freedom and did escape opression, so focus on the issues, and btw I teach Science.

If you’re going to put yourself out there by blaming the parents then you need to be ready to back up your assertions. Your grammar/command of English certainly does NOT give weight to your claims that it is parents, NOT THE SCHOOL and/or its policies that also create big problems. And it DOES NOT MATTER THAT YOU ARE AN IMMIGRANT. Stop making excuses.

Where is the study that says school lunch is a cause of obesity?
The absence of physical education on a daily basis could be a cause. At my school, high school kids are done with a full year of physical education in one semester. They are required to have two years of physical education. They actually only have one year in my school. What signs are we giving our kids when this happens? I agree with the teacher above, the parents are the problem. Quit attacking the grammar, see the argument and solve it in your community. That will make america great again,peace.

The point is that the American public schools now exist for the purpose of providing free lunch, breakfast and dinner for the students. They also exist to propogandize for the Leftist democrat party and teach the children to never question the authority of the central government. They also exist to pay the teachers unions extremely high salaries and benefits. There is nothing about education in the department of education.

I tend to agree. A few years ago, my oldest son was a single father raising two very young children (2 and 4 years old). He was getting over $400 a month in food stamps and WIC benefits. That’s twice as much as my wife and I spend on food each month. Insufficient food isn’t the problem – poor food choices is the problem.

Leaving your child’s education (both intellectually and sexually) and nutrition up to strangers who work for the government is insane. We were pretty broke through the first 7 years of our marriage and we made sacrifices so I could home-school. Yes, teachers, parents and students are all part of the meltdown.

Teachers? HAH! These are the a-holes who will go on strike for more greenbacks. So much for ‘caring about the children’ b.s.!

I home-schooled my child back when it wasn’t ‘cool’ yet and I was considered some kind of whack by my in-laws and friends until others starting seeing the great results in my child and many of them (including my MIL who home-schooled one of her grandchildren) turned their opinions around. Now, there are no excuses. Do it!

“Public school” has become nothing but a tool for Leftist indoctrination and handing out condoms and preaching Leftist doubledy-gook.

@20. kilroy,

If you can’t see the Leftist indoctrination going on in USA schools then you didn’t learn much from your 30 years of commie suffrage. And, by the by…when I ‘text’ someone I capitalize and use punctuation as best I can (I certainly make my share of mistakes), but, for you, as a teacher to be so lazy when posting on a public forum is sad. If claiming I was a teacher, I’d be damned sure to cross my ‘t’s and dot my ‘i’s. Is even that too much to expect from someone who supposedly ‘educates’ our youth?

Re: “A study found that 330 public school districts had been offering healthy food for the last five years and “did not see a falloff in demand.” This highlights the benefits of local control, where schools respond to their tax-paying constituents.”

All it means is that depressed kids will eat more, no matter what you give them!

And why are America’s kids depressed? Because the engineer of the education system, John Dewey, wanted them depressed, that’s why!

These real victims of authoritarian Conformity (state totalitarianism) are told that they are good martyrs to the self-esteem-building creed of delusive victimology, to the “judge not!” paradigm; the state wants ALL future citizens to be knee-jerk snitches who’ll go whining to Big Nanny whenever confronted with the horrors of self-reliance! Their instinct to self-defense, too, must be weaseled out of them, because like the mindlessly authoritarian kindergarten teacher who refuses to adhere to Godlen-Rule causality, and instead proclaims: “It doesn’t matter WHO started it, all that matters is that *I* want it to stop!” Victims beware: all opposites are equal in Big Nanny OvaMa’s Wonderland, and, “because there’s always a diverse mulstiplicity of causes and effects, we can never really know anytinng, for sure! We – you – are all weak little victims, so you have no rights, but must form into groups for protection… only groups have rights, and you are only afforded temporary, revokable privileges!

Seems you contradict yourself. First, you complain that I am wrong to argue in favor of local control. Then you cite are your source a federal bureaucrat who would like to destroy local control. So which is it going to be: government monopoly without responsibility, or local control where communities decide what to do with their own tax dollars?

Anyone else notice a tone of disappointment to this article? It is as if the world would be a better place if the government performs better and does more for us. Are we all so immersed in collectivism that we can’t see the forest through the damned trees?

Disappointment? Did you actually read the entire report?
What is disappointing is:

• People setting up straw dummies so they can rail against an article, instead of taking the information and getting out the message that the government has no obligation to provide services.
• People are so poorly versed in history and grammar that they continue living in a fantasy world where some government bureaucrat will do something for them.
• People are so lazy and entitled that they believe they can lay around and whine, instead of making something of themselves and taking care of their own.

Be part of the solution. Wake somebody up today. No government anywhere has ever been held accountable for failing to make healthy, protect, or educate you.

I’m glad someone finally pointed this out. Pull up any of the BMI calculators and plug in 6′ tall 225 lbs. It will produce a result of “obese”. Does anyone really think that is “obese”? Check LaBron James’s height and weight against it. He’s a few pounds short of “obese”. And remember, the CDC puts out these statistics based on a survey of behavioral questions, from which they then extrapolate “obesity” based on the respnses. Computer models. There is no actual data set of people’s weight (yet). Like the government’s definition of “poverty”, it’s a construct to be used for political purposes. Of all people, conservatives should be on to this trick by now.

Regarding growth hormones. Take a look at Ben&Jerry ice cream. The declare all over the front that they use cows not treated with BGH. Look closer, and you will see a disclaimer saying “Studies have not shown any difference between milk from cows treated with BGH and those that are not”.

While I agree the BMI is a poor metric, as a health care professional it is painfully obvious that obesity levels are up. There are plenty of articles and research showing how lifestyle choices are the main cause of most medical procedures and adult illnesses. Do a search on it.

“These analyses show that smoking remains the leading cause of mortality. However, poor diet and physical inactivity may soon overtake tobacco as the leading cause of death.”

Not that I think the government should mandate nor participate in a solution, as if it could.

It seems to me the essence of conservatism to take care of one’s health (local control at its finest).

• It promotes self-reliance, an attribute much-praised by conservatives.
• It conserves your wealth: doctors and insurance premiums are both expensive.
• It promotes a sense of accomplishment, another valuable attribute, since the opposite creates victim-mentality which plays well into the big-government agenda.

But you are correct: The BMI is useless. People who include resistance training in their exercise regimen will have larger muscles. Muscle weighs more per volume measure than fat. Therefore, a perfectly healthy person will be judged “obese” by an ignorant practitioner or government bureaucrat looking to steal more of your money in order to justify growing bureaucracy to guide the poor stupid, helpless sheep.

We also begin to lose muscle mass some time after age 30, and resistance training greatly slows this age-related degeneration. Muscles support healthy joints. If we lose muscle mass, the joints have to absorb more weight-bearing in gravity, which leads to joint problems and more medical expense. So again, self-reliance, exercise, conservation of resources (like your money), and conservative values go hand-in-hand.

The sad part about our education system is not the money we spend. Nobody wants to talk about the kids that should not be in our public schools. Everybody has to go to school, that is the PC thing to do. I am not saying those kids can not learn, they can learn, they choose not to learn. Those kids disrupt our school`s and hinder other students from learning and are a physical threat to other students and teachers . This country spends a lot of money on these kids and we have a lot of secondary schools to help these kids learn, not just book learning but trades too. It is the old story you can make a kid go to school but you can not make them learn anything. Some teachers should not be teaching, they can not teach or do not want to teach. After a teacher get tenure it is almost impossible to fire them, and with human nature if you can get a free pay check for doing nothing, a lot of people will. Look at our politicians, it is easier to fire a cop than a teacher.

Addressing the obesity issue is easy. Stop providing farming subsidies which keep the price to the consumer artificially low. When those fries, big macs, and doritos are sold for what they actually cost to produce, only the wealthy and genetically flawed will be obese.

For 2Texans:
Please, read my post carefully. I stated:
‘study at home, reading and practice is a must, I did not get two masters by watching tv or hanging out with my friends, but with endless hours of study and reading and practice, when are we going to hold the parents accountable? and the students? in this triangle, teachers are only one side’
As you can clearly see, valid for every ‘language bully’ of this article, holding the teachers accountable is only part of the solution. It’s surprising how offended some readers have reacted to my post. Would any of you dare to challenge my assertion? Please, do so. I’m anxious to read the ad hominem attacks.
I sincerely hope the readers keep it simple and into the substance. For instance, somebody responded regarding the ‘leftist mindset of the schools’ and the ‘indoctrination’. And while this is true, it had nothing to do with my post or the reaction to the article.
Our students, our children deserve the best, but the best in ‘more time reading and studying’ you may click http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/12/21/my_lazy_american_students/?p1=Well_MostPop_Emailed6 and read this article.
Let’s see if the ‘language police’ does not get me this time, oops! maybe I should have capitalized it. Well…maybe next time. By the way reader John had spelling errors. I did not see anybody jumping on him. Maybe it is because I introduced myself as a teacher. The reader who says that he/she uses the texting on the phone using capitalization and good grammar, must have all the time in the world.